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FILM; Satyajit Ray Honored, Without Profit in His Land

By EDWARD A. GARGAN

Published: February 16, 1992

CALCUTTA, India—
Slouched in his favorite leather armchair, a fine wool shawl pulled around his cloud-white cotton pajama-style kurta, Satyajit Ray peers around his familiar study, books and manuscripts stacked and crammed into sagging wooden shelves, a desk smothered with letters -- many congratulatory epistles for winning an Oscar for his life's work -- while an overhead lamp flickers momentarily as Calcutta's persnickety power supply seems to dither over what to do. As he often does, he lets his fingertips play along the edge of his lips, almost as if he wants to sculpt each word, each thought.

In the streets beneath his genteelly shabby and rambling apartment on the third floor of what Indians call a "mansion," horns blat and trucks grind their gears as they attempt to navigate a maelstrom of vehicles, people and ideas. At each sunrise, there seem to be more people, more slums, more garbage, more political rallies, all compressed into a metropolis of blackening buildings, moonscaped roadways and thick swaddlings of air pollution. Visitors shake their heads here, wondering what can become of this city, once so grand and now often politely referred to as a hellhole.

"Calcutta? Where is it going?" the 70-year-old Mr. Ray asks with mock weariness. "The same question has been asked for the last 50 years." He laughs loudly, a deep, euphonious rumble that almost jiggles his china teacup. "It's heading. It's heading. Nobody knows where. But it's heading. Things are happening. People are buying tickets to see theater or cinema, going to concerts, buying books, going to the book fair -- it takes place in all the big cities of India, but it is only in Calcutta that it is a total success."

It is always said that Calcutta is a place of poets and singers, novelists and dreamers. Taxi drivers and postmen, hotel maids and office workers all take up pens and compose and publish. Bengalis here think of themselves as better than other Indians, more intellectual, more thoughtful, less superstitious, less materialistic. Their intellectual saint, Rabindranath Tagore, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Now, their patron of the screen, Satyajit Ray, has won Hollywood's highest accolade for his moving pictures.

The honorary Academy Award, announced prior to this week's revelation of the traditional nominees in various categories, will be presented March 30 during the annual ceremonies. The citation recognizes Mr. Ray's "rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on film makers and audiences throughout the world." Among directors who have been similarly honored are Akira Kurosawa, Hal Roach, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles.

"I'm surprised," admitted Mr. Ray, a tall, lanky man who looks a bit like the silent, gaunt statues on Easter Island. "I'm surprised particularly because my films are not that well known in the States. They are much better known in Britain, Paris certainly now, and even Japan. But obviously there is a certain section, in any case, who like my films. Anyway, it means a lot to me. It means a lot to me because I've learned my craft of making films by watching Hollywood films of the 30's, 40's and 50's. And I never went to a school. That was my school."

It is not only in the United States that Mr. Ray's work is scantily known. Here, few Indians will admit to having seen one of his films. No theater in India is currently showing a movie by him, and it is unlikely, despite the Oscar, that they will. Like that of Bunuel or Renoir or De Sica, or Federico Fellini or even Mr. Kurosawa, Mr. Ray's work is thoughtful, wrenching, uncomfortable, often distressingly quotidian in its explorations. Instead, India's theaters are filled with the commercial froth of Bombay's huge movie studios, what they call Bollywood, which churn out saccharine and predictable stories of love and violence, all liberally lathered with song and dance.

Even in his beloved Calcutta, it is virtually impossible to find a showing of a movie by Mr. Ray. Every few years, for a week or so, a theater will run his latest endeavor, but despite this city's intellectual pretensions, his films rarely run longer. Partly, Mr. Ray says, this is because of the changes sweeping across India, the pressures of work and, perhaps ultimately, television.

"There are still poets and novelists and film makers and whatnot, but not as many as there used to be," he said, his long fingers toying with his pipe. "And the novelists and the poets all have very good jobs with good salaries, and the writing has fallen down. They have no new experience to write from. It's very disappointing. Films, of course, are not doing very well at all because of video partly, partly because the theaters are so badly maintained. In summer, there's no air conditioning. They won't run the air conditioning. They use the fans, the electric fans. The projection is bad. The sound is bad. The seats are bad. I mean, we had some of the finest cinemas in India. But no longer. I have stopped going to the cinema. I watch films on video.